 Well, good morning, radiant church. You guys feeling warm? Toasty in here? How many know you could be in Florida, baking in the sun, sweating, lying on dirty sand, listening to waves, nasty waves crashing on the beach. But no, you are blessed to live in Michigan. Cause we got Viking blood flowing through our veins. We were made for this, right? Can I get an amen? By faith, amen, amen. Hey, if you have your Bibles open them with me to Malachi, the book of Malachi chapter two. And while you're turning there, let me just highlight a couple of quick things that were in the update or the radiant news, as we call it now. This Wednesday night is our culmination of our 21 day season of prayer and fasting called seek. And this Wednesday night is gonna be a landmark service. And I really mean that at 6 30 p.m. I know it's gonna be a cold day. They're predicting the weather. So there's nothing else that you could possibly want to do outside, but be here because it is going to be a all out blitzkrieg, the throne of God. We're gonna worship, we're gonna pray. We've got some special guests who are gonna be with us and just some cool stuff. And then we're gonna have pizza afterwards. And we're gonna break the fast. And so plan on being here at 6 30 at the Richland campus. And then also, if you have not been to a prayer meeting yet during this 21 days, do us a favor. Do something brand new. Come to one of the prayer meetings on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday and just try one. Do something new that just steps one step deeper and do something maybe is brand new for you. If you've never fasted before and you're just like, wow, I'm kind of waiting it out. And we're almost done with it. Now we can go back to life as normal when everybody else is eating. Listen, I want to challenge you. Just do one meal, do one day, do something fast, even just an hour of social media or something. Just do one thing so that you can be a part of that. And then let's come together Wednesday night and let's lay it all before the feet of Jesus as an act of worship. And we're just gonna praise him and celebrate him. I think it's gonna be an awesome, awesome time. So we look forward to you being here and hopefully that will encourage you, spur you on and you'll be here. It's gonna be a great night. Okay, Malachi chapter two, you guys there? This is part four of our series entitled First Love. We're going through the book of Malachi. And we've entitled it First Love because the entire book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, it's all about God calling us to our first love, last book, first love. It's in the spirit of what Jesus said when he said that you've walked away from your first love, returned to your first love. And that's what God is doing in the book of Malachi. And today, the title of the message is God's Word Matters. Let's look at chapter two. We're gonna read just the first two verses. So if you're following along in your Bible, you can see it, otherwise it's gonna come up on the screen. And here's what it says in verse number one. And now, oh priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart. And it's talking about the people of Israel were not taking God's word to their heart. Lord, today we just pray that you would give us open eyes of our heart and open ears of our spirit to be able to see and hear what you are saying to us. God, you're the God who speaks. You're the God who loves us. You're the God who reveals yourself as our heavenly Father who approaches us with gentle hands, with a strong heart and you draw us to yourself. Lord, it doesn't matter who we are, where we're from, where we're at on the spectrum today, we know that you have something to say to us. So Lord, speak to us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. So when you read words like this, and you might notice this, if you have been reading the Bible on your own, going through the Bible in a year, or you've read through the prophets especially, that the prophets have kind of two aspects to their voice. One is a very direct and a very stern, almost judgmental voice that they speak with because they're speaking on behalf of God. But the other side of the voice of a prophet is the loving and the drawing voice of invitation. It's really the voice of God saying, this is where you're at, this is the problem, but I'm calling you home. And that's exactly what we find in these verses that we just read. God is speaking to the people of Israel. And as we talked about last week, God spoke to them about their worship. He said, look, you've walked away from me. I've loved you, and you say, what way have I loved you? And then God describes to them the way that he's been faithful to them. And then he deals with the issue of their worship. He says, your worship has become impure. And today what we see is God is speaking to Israel and he's speaking specifically to the priests. He starts off with these words and now, oh, priests. How many know you know you're in for a conversation when the Lord starts his address to you with, oh, whatever your name is. It's like, oh, Lee, when I was growing up, when my mom got angry or upset at me and I did something wrong, my mom would call me Lee Michael. That's when you knew. When mom threw the middle name in there, how many know, you know, busted. Lee Michael, I mean, that was trouble. When God says, oh, priests, he's about to bring the hammer down. And he's bringing the hammer down because there was a problem. Israel was no longer honoring God's word. The priests specifically were no longer honoring God's word whatsoever. It didn't matter what God said, they were disregarding it. And as a result of that, the people of Israel who were living at that time it seemed as if God was not going to be faithful to fulfill his promises completely. And what had happened is their heart had drifted away from God. And when their heart drifted away from their first love, they began to not just disregard, but they began to disobey God's word radically. And yet they were still going through the motions. The priests were still going through the motions. They were still going to the temple. They were still offering sacrifices. We showed that last week where they're offering sacrifices that are blind and lame and diseased, exactly the opposite of what God said he wanted. But they're giving God their leftovers. And it's because their heart was far away from God. They wanted to be religious and have a form of religion, but they didn't really have faith and trust in the character of God. And so their heart had grown cold. And now what we see is that they're disregarding God's word. They have the law. The priests aren't teaching people the law. They're disregarding it themselves. And what God is saying to them right here is he's saying to them, I'm going to judge you in order to get your attention because my words matter. God is saying this as a parent. How many parents in this room know that there's a difference between your kids hearing your voice and your kids listening to your voice? Is there a difference? How many know that the hearing of children is far greater than the hearing of older people? They have like sonar radar built into their ears. They can hear conversations they're not supposed to hear. They can be up in the farthest closet of your third floor attic and you can be in the farthest opposite corner of your basement whispering about something that they are not supposed to hear and your kids will hear it. Hey, I didn't know we're going to Disney. Were you talking about my sister and you're just like, whoa, whoa, you're not supposed to hear. That was a private conversation. But things that they don't want to hear, how many know, you can stand in their doorway and say clean your room. And then two hours later come back up and say, how come your room's not clean yet? Huh, I didn't hear you. No, you heard me. You just weren't listening to me. We have to hear these words through the lens of God as a father because that's who he is in verse number six. He says, a son honors his father and if then I am a father, where's my honor? God is a father. Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer that God is our heavenly father. So God says as a heavenly father to the nation of Israel and specifically to its leadership, the priests. He's saying, you're hearing me. You have my word, but you're not listening to me because you're disregarding my word. And because of that, he says, I'm going to curse even your blessings. Wow, God, that's pretty harsh. It's not very nice. But every parent knows that if you really love your kids, you'll discipline them. Every parent knows that you have a long-term view of where you want to see your kids go. You have plans for them. You have dreams for them. You want them to be well-adjusted children that grow up to be well-adjusted adults that thrive and flourish in their destiny and their calling. And you know as a parent that in order to do that, sometimes you have to discipline your children. There are parents that over-discipline their children and are harsh and the Bible talks about that. It says, don't frustrate your children. But there's a difference between being harsh and actually loving your kids and disciplining. And listen, the Bible says, if you love your children, you're discipline them. Do you know that the Bible says in Hebrews, it says that if you aren't disciplined by God when you're out of line, it says you're actually an illegitimate. God's not your father. But if God is your father, he disciplines those that he loves. You ever seen a child that goes undisciplined? One time we were at the park in Plainwell. This is when our kids were little. And there was another family that was there and we got talking. Our kids were about the same age and the kids are running all over. And we rounded up our kids and said, all right guys, we had just gone to Plainwell ice cream. Come on somebody. And we had just loaded them up and we were getting them into our minivan. And we said, are you guys sticking around? And their kid was going berserker like crazy. And they said, so in the middle of conversations, we're talking adult talking, their kid would come up and they would like hush us to hear their child. In the world I grew up in, adults, you did not interrupt adults. You waited till you got your moment, right? But this kid, and so we asked, are you guys leaving? And they said, well, I don't know. Let's ask Timmy, I'm making up the name. And so there's like, Timmy, are you ready to go yet? No! And so he ran off, I guess we're not leaving. Timmy's not ready to go. We don't want to stunt Timmy's creativity. I firmly believe in stunting children's creativity. Because creativity will be turned into disobedience. And disobedience will grow into rebellion. There are far too many child-centered families. That's why we raise self-centered adults. And God is not a child-centered God. God is a God-centered God. We live in a God-centered universe. And sometimes as a good father, when we are out of step with God's instructions and God's commands as Israel was God's word, sometimes God has to pull the feathers out of our nest. He has to curse our blessings in order to get us to realize that we are out of step and out of order. Sometimes God has to say, you know what? The blessings on your life are there because my favor has been upon your life. Because I'm a good father and because I love you. But I'm willing to pull the comforts out and to let you experience a little bit of pain to get your attention because I love you and I want good things for you. And I know that if you stay on this course of action, it's going to lead to death and destruction. It's going to lead to loss of potential. It's not gonna lead to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and all the fruit of despair. It's going to lead to death, destruction, decay, disappointment, and all of those other aspects of it. And nobody wants that and God doesn't want that. Israel had a massive problem. They were disregarding God's word and God was saying, my word matters. And the chief offenders were the priests. That's why he starts off by saying, oh, priests. Why is that important? Well, you need to understand that the priests were the leaders. In Exodus 28 and 29, God appointed the sons of Aaron to be the priests for all the people of Israel. And he gave them four responsibilities. He said, number one, I want you to serve uniquely as the servants of God in the house of God. Number two, I want you to teach the people my word. I want you to teach them my words and my instructions so they know how to live. God gave very specific instructions. Third thing is he says, I want you to help others worship so that they know how to worship. And the fourth thing is I want you to live separate and distinct from all other people in the way that you dress, in the way that you live, and all of those things. So that the others in the nation of Israel will look at you, the priests, and will emulate you and want to be like you. And therefore there will be an entire nation of priests. Four things of priests, the house of God, the word of God, worship of God and to be distinct that point people to God. And the priests were called to do that, but they were not doing that. The priests were living corrupt. They weren't honoring God's word anymore. They were still showing up at the temple. They were going to church, but they weren't really worshiping God from their heart as we saw they're offering him diseased animals and they're keeping the good stuff for themselves. They're corrupt. They're not teaching the word of God anymore. They're teaching their opinions. And they weren't distinct and separate. You know, the priests had written into their garments, the ironic priesthood, it would be written holy unto the Lord. The word holy means to be set apart for God's purposes. They weren't doing any of those things. They were corrupt. Now, Israel had a priest problem. Let me fast forward the tape, 3,700 years into the future to where we live today. In the world you and I live in today, and let's just put it into our modern context, in the 21st century church. God wants to remind us that his word matters. Because let me tell you what the word of God is. It's not some archaic, ancient campfire stories that were jotted down because they were man's best ideas and that we've somehow moved beyond them because we have science and because we have philosophy and psychology and now that's kind of a relic of the past. No, the word of God is living, it's active, it's inspired. It was God the Father who revealed himself to humanity and it was given to men and it's handed down to us so that we will know how to please God, that we know his character, that we know his purposes, we know what pleases him and we know what displeases him and God promises us when we live according to his words there's blessing and there's peace and there's righteousness that flows out of our lives. God says to us today, my word matters but in the 21st century church we have a priest problem. We have a priest problem. Just like Israel had a priest problem. Our priesthood has grown ignorant of God's word and it has grown corrupt to a certain degree because our hearts have become cold towards God. Now, your first impression is probably like mine if I were to hear what I just said, you would think to yourself, oh, he's talking about pastors and he's talking about clergy. To a certain degree, you're right but it's an incomplete statement because right now we do have a priest problem. We've all seen the news of the Catholic priest scandals that go back for generations of abuse and it's appalling but it's not just in the Catholic church, it's in all denominations. Where we have, we all saw it, I grew up under the Jimmy Swaggerd and the Jim Baker scandals where there was impropriety and immorality and those kinds of things. And you know, I was supposed to go to Jimmy Swaggerd Bible College the year that it all came down. And when it fell apart, it was shattering to me. I've seen good friends of mine who are pastors fall into immorality and it's shocking when it happens. It's discouraging. We've all heard of pastors who used to teach the word of God, the inspired word of God that it was true. They would teach it with conviction and with passion and today they don't even believe in it anymore. One of my mentors early on in ministry who's preached here several different times in the early years today, doesn't even believe that half of the Bible is actually inspired anymore, that Jesus isn't the only way, doesn't believe in half of those things anymore. And that's a priest problem, but it's an incomplete priest problem. Because let me tell you the other side of the coin is yes, Aaron's descendants were the priests and they were given those four responsibilities. But God's end desire was never that there would only be a group of people within the church who would be priests. God's dream and God's actually reality for you and I as New Testament Christians is that every single one of us are priests under God. If you know anything about the Reformation under Martin Luther, one of the foundations of that was called the priesthood of the believer, that we don't need a mediator between us and God. I'm your pastor, I have the privilege of teaching you the word of God. But if you ever show up on a Sunday morning and I tell you that the Bible's not true, pack your bags, leave your coffee and run for your car. Because I'm not the one between you and God. You have a direct access and a pipeline to the presence of God because you are a priest under God. It's always been that way. Listen to the words of 1 Peter chapter two. This is New Testament. He says in chapter two, verse four and five, he says, as you come to him, that's Jesus. A living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. And then verse nine, this is one of my favorite New Testament passages because it reminds me of a song. Says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous life. Want you are not a people, but now you are the God's people. Want you did not receive mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Listen to these words in verse nine. You are a chosen race and a royal priesthood. You, you're just like, whoa, I'm not a priest. No, you're a priest. If you are a Christian, you have been made a priest that has the same four responsibilities called to serve God and building the church. You've been called to know and study and teach others the word of God. You've been called to offer worship and to help others worship. And you've been called to live set apart and holy so that when the world looks at you, even when they call you an evildoer, they'll see your good deeds and they'll glorify God in heaven. You're a priest when I read those words that reminds me of songs we sang in church in the 80s. There was a time when the songs that we sang in church were not as good as the songs we sing today. Can anybody relate to that? I mean, I'm not talking about hymns, I'm talking about like choruses. And we used to sing a group of songs called boom chuck songs. You know, I was like boom chuck, boom chuck, boom chuck, boom chuck, boom chuck, boom chuck. You could do them on beat like that and you could do a whole bunch of them side by side. And we used to do this one. In him we live, boom chuck, boom chuck, move and have our being. And then you go right into another one. You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people that you should show forth the praises of him. Bad at that, we had trumpets. Who has called you out of darkness? Come on, if you know it. Out of darkness, out of, nobody knows it. Darkness into his marvelous. It's amazing how songs help you memorize scripture. And so I've got that verse memorized. You are a holy priesthood, a royal nation, a peculiar people. Do you know that you're supposed to be peculiar? You're a priest unto God. That should change the way that you view your Christianity because if you think I'm the priest, then I do all the work for you but you're a priest which means you have access to God. And why is that a problem? Well, here's the other side of the problem is because we live in a nation, United States of America, that is so blessed. We have more Bibles in our nation than all the other Bibles throughout the rest of the world combined. And yet we have greater biblical illiteracy in the church than at any other time in history. Christians don't know the Bible. I taught on Noah's Arco in time and I had a guy come up to me or a student, a young lady come up to me and she goes, now who's this guy named Noah? Our generation doesn't know the Bible. And you know what, we can't expect the world to know the Bible. And as, listen, as there has been this divergence between American culture no longer being kind of generally influenced by Christianity, it's diverted off this way. What's happening is the church stands over here and what used to be just kind of common, everybody kind of knows the biblical narrative and Judeo-Christian ethics and the Ten Commandments. Now what's happening is culture's becoming post-Christian. If we as the church don't embrace our place as priests under God and take our responsibility to know God and to know his word because that's what God wants and have it changed the way that we live, then what will happen is that we will draft off American culture and we'll follow the path they're going down in and we will become less and less biblically illiterate but we will be educated at the university of secularism and we'll have more in common with the atheists at Oxford than the Jesus of Nazareth. We all have a responsibility to know the Bible, why? Because God wants more than anything for you and for me to know him. He's a father, he wants us to know him. Well, how do we know him? We know him through his words. How do I know my dad? How did I know my dad? I know him through his words and his actions. How do you know the person that you're married to? You know them through their words and their actions. How do we know God through his words and his actions? If we don't know his word, we don't know him. All we will know at that point is we'll just kind of know this religious projected up on the wall on the screen of culture's view of who God is and it will be filled with all of our thoughts and all of our ideas and all of our fears and all of our distinctions and what we end up doing is when we make a God that looks like us instead of us becoming more like the God who created us. Don't shout me down. You guys are getting quiet on me. What was wrong with Israel in this particular story? It's very simple, they were disregarding God in his word, they just didn't care. Look at verse number three. God says, behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces. Wow, the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it. That's extreme language. I've heard of egg on your face, but I mean, wow, God. You know, sometimes you and I use extreme language and then after the fact go, wow, I could have dialed that down. God never says anything without having a reason behind it. Why in the world would God say to them, I'm gonna take dung and smear it all over your face and then have you taken away with it? It's because they knew exactly what he was talking about. You see, the one part of a sacrifice, when you bring a sacrifice to God that was acceptable to offer it, before you ever brought it into the city gates of the city, it had to be cleaned out of its entrails and all of its dung removed from it because it was unclean. And so when you look at ancient Israel, there was a gate in the city walls called the dung gate. And the reason why I was called that is that's where you cleaned animals out. You got the dung out of it because God said, that's unclean. Then you bring the animal and then you offer it. What God was saying is to the priests and to the leaders and to the people, you've disregarded my word and to the teachers, he's saying, what you are teaching the people is dung. It's unclean. And I'm gonna put it on your face where everybody can see it because it's unclean. I'm going to expose it because your worship and your teaching is unclean. And because of that, I'm gonna expose it. And just like it's taken away because it's unclean, I'm gonna remove you out of your place and I'm gonna replace you with those who will actually teach my word and those who will teach it the way I want to because I don't wanna be misrepresented. How many know that it's a terrible thing to have somebody take your words and misrepresent you to somebody else? How many times do we misrepresent God? Do you know that right now, there's all kinds of statistics and data and research information about how millennials specifically, but a whole segment of people are leaving the church. I get forwarded to me all the time. All pastor, have you seen this? And I read articles and I study that kind of stuff. And you know, it's absolutely true. Young people and even some older people are leaving the church in droves. You wanna know why? If you dig deeper below the surface in the research right now, they're not just leaving any churches, the churches they're actually leaving are churches that are liberal and do not teach the Bible and everything goes and they've actually, churches that actually think they're going to gain people by stripping it down and becoming more like the world and watering it down and becoming culturally relevant. I actually, the churches that are losing people, it's churches like radiant and churches all over our nation where people are teaching the word of God, where other, where young people are drawing by the hundreds and the thousands. Why? It's because we don't want God's word misrepresented. We wanna know God as he truly is. We don't want, we don't want him all dressed up. Listen, I'm not looking for an American Jesus who fits into my political categories, who dresses like me, who thinks me. If my Jesus votes on every issue the way I vote, then something's wrong. If my Jesus acts and thinks and behaves just like I do, then something's wrong. I'm looking for a higher. I'm looking for something transcendent. I'm looking for some mystery, some things that I can't figure out because I want a God who's worthy to be worshiped. I think there's a hunger in our culture for the word of God. And if you wonder, do you really believe the Bible? I believe this thing from Genesis to maps. I believe where it says genuine leather on the back and everything in between. And that might make me narrow-minded. It just makes me focused. Because I'm gonna tell you what, nothing has changed my life like the word of God. I was a 12-year-old kid and I began to study the word of God, not out of academic or intellectual pursuits, but because I wanted to know God my father and to set my feet on a path. What we have right now in America is we have a drought for the word of God. You know, we have people that will ask us all the time, come and say, why is radiant growing? And by no means are we the only church that are a lot of fantastic churches out there. They're teaching the Bible, helping people encounter the presence of the Lord and we champion them all. But occasionally people will ask us, it's like, what's the secret recipe? It's like, keep it simple. Teach the Bible. Worship Jesus like he's really alive. Evangelize and send missionaries like the gospel really matters, like heaven and hell are very real realities. Teach the Bible like God actually said it. You do those things and people are hungry and thirsty to know the word of God. And God, listen, here's the fantastic part, and God is equally hungry to draw near to his people. Oh man, that's good news. You should be waving hankies right now. You should, come on, you should just a little, you should dance a jig. Recently an article came out on CNN that said, tried to show us the future of Christianity. So Christianity's future looks more like Lady Gaga than Mike Pence. And I think that's interesting how the world wants to tell the church what our future is. The world wants to try and shape Christianity. And what they're really saying, hey, if you want a future, then you better dial things back. You better be willing to reject what God says and you better listen more closely to what we're saying because we're the shapers of the future. We're the ones who are going to determine whether you have a place at the table, whether you have a future. We're the ones who are gonna determine whether your voice is ever heard again. So you better dial it down. You better bow down to our idol. You better act like us. You better look like. And remember what God said in 2 Peter, you are peculiar. You're supposed to be strange. You're supposed to stand out. Because I'm gonna tell you the future of Christianity is not Lady Gaga. Well, and thank Jesus. And the future of Christianity is not Lee Cummings. The future of Christianity is Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead, exalted, seated at the right hand of God the Father, soon to return, establish his throne, reign and rule, injustice, peace, and mercy, and in truth. That's the future of Christianity. Charles Spurgeon, who's one of my heroes, once upon a time said, if we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God's word in our sermons. I believe that that's true, because you see what we typically do is when we approach the word of God, just like Israel, listen, all of us, we can look at Israel in the book of Malachi and say, wow, those guys were just so rebellious and heart-hearted, but if we're being honest, all of us at times are confronted by the strength, but also the mercy of God saying, you know what, your life is not, you're not obeying, you're not listening to my word. And I think that there's something about a religious spirit in our culture where we want to have a form of religion. We want to be able to say, well, I'm a church goer, I believe in Jesus, and I'm going to heaven, but, and when we step into the realm of, but what we're doing is we're challenging or we're doing exactly what Israel did, which is we disregard the word of God and it has everything to do with our responses to the word of God. So there's seven potential responses to God's word. And six of them are the response of a religious attitude that says, I want a form of godliness, but I want to deny the power of it. And one of the responses that we can give God's word is the only one that actually produces power transformation and change in our life. So let me give you the six, because this is what we do. It's happening in the church, it's happening all over our culture. This is how we respond to God's word. God speaks, this is what we say. Number one is we ignore it. We say, well, I'm not interested in what it has to say. Do you know right now, Christianity in China has over 120 million Christians. In the 1850s, there were almost zero. Man named Hudson Taylor went there and risked his life to bring the gospel and founded what's called the China Inland Mission. And now Christianity cannot be extinguished even though they've tried. A couple of years ago, somebody showed me a video of missionaries who were bringing Bibles in, giving them to Christians in these far west villages. And Christians would weep over the Bible, they would kiss it, hold it because they'd never owned a Bible. Can you imagine what it would be like to not just wonder what God says but not be able to have access to it? And for them, what a treasure it is. Guys, we just, can I just be honest, we just, I have more Bibles than probably anybody in this room. Somebody else might beat me, but I got hundreds of Bibles. I'm obsessed. But sometimes I just stop and say, do you know what a treasure this thing is? That I have what God says to me. You know how easy it is in our culture where it's common to just ignore it and say, I don't know what it means. I don't know what it says. I'm busy looking at other things. I'm busy watching Hulu. I'm busy on Netflix or I'm scrolling somebody. That won't change your life for eternity. The word of God will. So number one, we ignore it. Number two, we excuse it by saying, you know, it really doesn't matter what it says. It's old, it's our cake, it's out of date, it's not real, so we excuse it. Number three, we corrupt it. False teachers are out there. Beware of false teachers and they say, well, when you read the Bible and it says that, it's not really saying what you think it says. It's old, it's outdated. And then number five, we marginalize it. We say, that's your opinion or that's what some people think. Number five, we can dissect it. We say, well, I like this part, but I don't like that part. Do you know that there's a Bible in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC? That's called the slave Bible. And it was a Bible that was produced to give slaves in America, African slaves. And there were parts that were actually taken out of the Bible because they felt that it would incite rebellion of the slaves to try and gain their freedom. And so they created a Bible with sections of it that talked about freedom, liberty, that all men are creating. That stuff was taken out of the Bible and they created a new version called a slave Bible and they gave it slaves. Do you know that? Men will answer to God for doing that. But you know, Jefferson did the same thing. He took all of the supernatural things out of the gospels because he liked the ethics of Jesus, but he didn't like the supernatural elements in it because he didn't believe in the miraculous. He was a naturalist. And so he came up with the Jeffersonian New Testament. Do you know, I think sometimes subconsciously we do the same thing where we just marginalize it and we dissect it and we say, well, I like this part of the Bible, we don't like that part of the Bible. Come on, we got to take all of the word of God from beginning to end. Jesus reiterated what God said in Psalm 119 that the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God remains forever. Can't marginalize it, can't dissect it. And lastly, we disagree with it. See, most of the time when you find a man who finds fault with the Bible, before he ever found fault with the Bible, he realized that the Bible found fault with him. And most of the time when we look into the word as a mirror, the things in the Bible that we disagree with are the things that are the most challenging to us. And we have a response. We can either do these things, we can ignore, excuse, corrupt it, marginalize it, dissect it, disagree with it, or here's the seventh response to the word of God. We honor it. We listen, we hear God's voice. Today, it says in Hebrews, if you hear my voice, do not harden your heart as in the day of rebellion. So we hear God's word, we listen, we're saying, God, I wanna hear what you have to say because I believe you're good and I believe you have my best interest in mind. I believe that you're for me. So I'm listening and then we obey it and listening and obey it brings honor to God. I have a golden retriever, my buddy, his name is Boaz. And when I got Boaz, he was a crazy puppy. If you've ever heard of puppy, you know it's a good thing that puppies are cute because otherwise, they'd be gone. And so I took Boaz to training and dog obedience training. And first day we showed up, he's all over the place, he's on this leash, he's running crazy. And the trainer says, we're gonna teach your dog how to sit, how to lie down, how to bark, all that kind of, I'm like, this dog's crazy. And oh, don't worry, he'll get it. And he says, here's a bag of treats. So it gives me a bag of little cookies, little biscuits. And he says, put that in your pocket and hold the leash tight and tell Boaz to sit. And I'm like, you know, he doesn't understand English. I don't know if he know that or not. And he's, no, he'll memorize the tone and the word. And so he says, okay, tell him to sit and then push their bottom down until they sit down and then celebrate and say, oh, good job. And you give them a biscuit. And then they're like, oh, I get it. So when master, that's what he calls me. When master says to sit, good things come. Cause I like biscuits. And truth be told, I like biscuits. I like cookies. Anybody, I mean, you could get me to sit if you had a pocket full of Oreos. I'd be like, I'll bark too if you want me to. I mean, I'll roll over and give me the double stuff. It's all good. So I did this hundreds of times with Boaz. Now what's happening is he's got a rhythm. He knows that when I give him a command, if he obeys, blessing comes. Why? Because it's based on repetition of him knowing my character. You see, when we don't obey God's word, when we disregard it, it's because we have a wrong view of who God is. We think God's trying to take something from us. In reality, God's trying to give something to us. Look at what it says in verse number five. This was God's original covenant. He says, my covenant with him, talking about Aaron and the priesthood was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear. He feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me. Look at that, he walked with me. It's relationship in peace and uprightness. He's referring back to the days when Aaron and the priest loved God and honored his word and knew the character and the goodness of God. He said, God's good. So when God says obey, he's got a reason for it. When God says something I don't understand, listen, dogs don't understand English. They just know the tone. They memorize the sound. They don't need to have all the information around that command. They just know when master says something and I obey him, good things happen. Can we just bring it down real simple to our following and honoring God's word? When the master speaks and we obey, good things happen. Blessing happens. Let me finish this morning by reading from John chapter 15. In John chapter 15, this is Jesus. Verse number three, he's talking to disciples. He says, already you are clean because of the words that I've spoken to you. Did you get that? God's word has an ability to cleanse us. He says, abide in me. I and you as the branches cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, it is he that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like branches and withers. The branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. Listen to these next words, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the fathers love me, so I loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Why does God want us to obey him because he knows that it brings cleansing to our souls? It renews our thinking. It brings joy, it brings peace into our life. What does Jesus say is the secret? He says abide in me, abide in me. What does it mean to abide? It means to remain. Be steadfast, be close in proximity. See, we don't go to the Bible to check a box and say, all right, I read my Bible, now I'm living my real life. No, we go to the Bible hungry. We go to the Bible saying, God, I want to know you. I want to know your voice. I may not know all the answers, but I know that tone. When I read it, I hear the Holy Spirit echoing back through the words he inspired once. Now he breathes fresh life in it. It's inspired again, it goes to my soul and it speaks directly to me. And I realize I can do nothing of my own. I need to abide in you. It means to remain in it. Guys, we need to be people of the word in the days we live in. We need to be people of the word. We need to get it in us. We need to meditate on it. We need to memorize it. We need to think about it. We need to submit to it. We need to honor it. We need to teach it. We need to share it. We need to exemplify it because it is the power of God to transform and change our lives. To change my life. Listen, one of my earliest memories. Being a little boy was my grandfather. You've heard me tell this many times. My grandfather, a man of God, every morning when I was a little boy, I'd get up and I'd go out of my bedroom and grandpa at 5 36 o'clock in the morning would be sitting in his chair, with a cup of coffee and his 50 pound Dixon analytic King James study Bible, thicker than the Pontiac phone book. And he'd be reading the word. I'd go crawl upon his lap and he'd read the Bible to me. My grandfather's 87 years old. Married 66 years. 67 years. And I go to his house to visit him. Still to this day at 6 a.m., 7 a.m. He'll go to the same chair and he'll be reading the same Bible with the same cup of coffee. And he know what he's doing? He's abiding. He's abiding in the vine, in Jesus. Guys, we can do nothing of our own. We need to be plugged into Jesus, not just have a form of religion. We need to know him. We need to know his word. Listen, my grandfather is thriving in his love for Jesus some many years later, because the dude abides. The future of Christianity is not Lady Gaga. It's the big Lebowski. The dude abides. What are people gonna say about you in relationship to the word of God? Wouldn't it be cool if somebody says, man, that girl, she loves Jesus. And somebody goes, oh yeah, that chick abides. I want that to be said about us. I want that to be said about everything that we set our hand to. The future of Christianity is not Lady Gaga. It's people that honor God's word, abide in Christ, have great faith, do great exploits, and we point the world to the great God that we worship and the great God that we serve. Because we serve and we honor his word. Amen? Come on, would you stand up with me all over this room? Portage as well. People of his word, his word matters. We're gonna have a first love relationship with Jesus. We gotta be people of his word. Sometimes I think the greatest gift that they could give the church is if they made the Bible illegal. Because we have too much of it. We just take it for granted. Can you imagine if they made the Bible illegal? Christians would be walking around like drug dealers. They'd be like, I got some good stuff. Primo, some ESV, crossway, goat skin. Look at that, red letter edition. You go into high schools and see kids on their break out by their lockers and circles. What are you kids doing? Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. What are you doing? You smoking a joint? No, just reading the Bible. It's illegal, you know? They'd just be reading it and quoting it. It'd be amazing. You'd have parties where you'd go into the parties and people would pull stuff out and go, don't tell anybody I got one of these and you'd pull out, what do you got there? Oh, it's King James. They made it illegal, all of a sudden there'd be a demand on it. We need to be hungry for the word of God like we're hungry for pizza. We need to hunger to know God, to hear his voice. We need to be people saturated and abiding in it because it is life. Would you bow your heads with me? Father, I thank you for your word, that it's alive, it's not just dead words, it's alive, it's sharp, it's accurate. Your word cleanses, your word renews, your word gives life. It only took one word for you to call Lazarus out of the dead and it only takes one word from heaven to change our lives. Your word is food for our souls. God, may we be people that honor your word, believe your word. And Lord, I just bind a spirit of disbelief, spirit of doubt and skepticism, spirit of this age, and I release a spirit of faith all over this room. Holy spirit, move in and out of every row, up and down every aisle and draw us to Jesus, our first love. Draw us to Jesus, draw us to Jesus. No man comes to the Father except the spirit draws him. And right now, listening to my voice, whether online or in this room or in another room, I firmly believe that the spirit of God is tugging on some people's hearts this morning. He's polling you, he's prompting you, he's convicting you because you know that as you stand where you're standing today, you're not right with God. You may have a form of religion, but internally your heart is far away from God. You're in your sins. You're not walking to follow Jesus. You know that right now if you were to die and you stand before God and give an account for your life, you know that you're not right. You're not, Jesus is not the savior of your life and you know that. I wanna tell you that today, God came to this place for you to save you because he loves you. He knows that you can do nothing on your own. You can't save yourself. That's why God sent Jesus. God in the flesh who came, lived a perfect life and took your place, died your death on the cross and God raised him from the dead to give you new life. Today, even listening to me, there are some that are prodigals and you would say, there was a time where I was following God. Jesus was my first love, but I've walked away. And shame and guilt have tried to drown out the voice of your father that says, I still love you, come home. Start over, come home. Have a fresh start. You know you're not right with God, but it doesn't matter whether you're a prodigal or whether you've never made Jesus Christ, the Lord of your life for real. You just know that as you stand here, you're not right with God. But the good news is that today, you can leave this place different than you came in. You can be saved. You can become a child of God. You can have a brand new start. Bible says, if anyone believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and confesses with their mouth that God raised him from the dead, they shall be saved. If anyone calls upon the name of the Lord, they shall be saved. And I'm gonna lead us all in a prayer in just a moment, a prayer of salvation, a prayer that God hears. If you'll step out in faith today, you can be included in this prayer and today you can be saved. You can be made right with God. What I'm gonna ask you to do is, right now with no one looking around, just you and God, if the Holy Spirit is convicting you, if God is pulling on your heart and you know you need to get right with God today, and you say, pastor Lee, that's me, include me in this prayer. Or maybe you're a prodigal and you say, I need to come home today. Today I need a new beginning, a fresh start. I wanna start over today. Right now all over the room, doesn't matter who you are, you know you're not right with God, just raise your hand. You say, include me in that prayer today. Today I wanna get right with God. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Just raise it, I see those hands, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All the way in the back. Ma'am, I see your hand. Young lady, I see your hand, sir. Young man, young lady. Young people all over this room. Jesus came to save young people. Jesus came to save old people. Jesus came to save broken people. If that's you and you've not raised your hand yet, you raise it right now and we're gonna pray together. I see your hand, all the way in the back. God bless you, I see your hand. You can put your hands down, thank you. I want everyone in this room to pray this prayer together with me out loud. I don't want you to mean it because God is listening. Say this, say, Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I confess, I've sinned, I've been living for myself and I've rebelled against you and I can't fix myself, but I believe in you. I believe that you love me. I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe that he went to the cross for me and he paid my sin's price. Jesus, come into my heart. Be my Lord, be my Savior. I turn my back on my sin. I turn my back on my past. I turn my back on doing things my way and from now on, I belong to you. I'm gonna follow you. I'm gonna honor your word. I'm gonna fulfill my destiny. Thank you for loving me and saving me and giving me a brand new heart. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. Listen, a miracle just took place inside of you.